In the near future, Major is the first of her kind: A human saved from a terrible crash, who is cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world’s most dangerous criminals.

Why should you watch it?

Every otaku knows the meaning of the words: “Ghost in the Shell” and for those who aren’t an otaku I can sum it one single word: masterpiece. And is on that masterpiece that this movie is based.

All in all, this is a well made movie. We were a bit skeptic when it was announced that they were going to make this movie but after watching the first trailer it seemed that this was going to be a good movie, and indeed it is a terrific movie. The movie pays a good homage to the original manga. you feel its spirit all the time: in the characters, in the plot, in the music and above all in the visuals.

What they have done in this movie is pretty simple: they have taken the best parts of the manga and anime, they put them in a cocktail shaker and this movie came out. So one that has no idea about the original story will simply be amazed of the story and all the action scenes that are shown in the movie, which they don’t slow down for a moment. For us fans we are simply enjoying what we watched many time ago but now we enjoy watching it with real actors.

No need to say that Scarlett Black Widow fits in this characters perfectly. We are used to watch her in these kind of movies and she is fantastic. Not only that, she behaves like the cyborg/machine that she is, something that she kind of already did in the movie “Under the Skin”. The rest of the characters are well suited both in performance and in physical aspect.

It’s not easy adapting a manga into a single movie and it’s less easy making a good movie about it. Here that is not the case as you will find a great entertaining movie that will leave you breathless in terms of visual effects and in terms of actions scenes, which are an exact copy of the original story. For those who haven’t had the opportunity to read it, you will enjoy a good cyberpunk movie with loads of futurist takes and gadgets that you will definitely love.

Did you know?

– The title of the film (and its source material) is a play on ‘Ghost in the machine’ a concept in philosophy first used by Arthur Koestler in his 1967 book of the same name. In it he argues against the traditional Cartesian mind-body duality of the human mind, which traditionally saw the human body as a sort of complex machine with the soul or mind inside it controlling it.

– The Geisha’s featured in many of the films trailers wore physical full head Masks, created by Weta Workshop, modelled after Japanese Actress Rila Fukushima. Even the opening or ‘exploding’ of the Geisha’s heads was handled mechanically rather than by using CGI.

– This film’s production was met with controversy over the choice to cast the lead role of Major Motoko Kusanagi (a Japanese character in the original source material and previous adaptations) as white, with the role going to Scarlett Johansson. Online protests over Hollywood whitewashing flared up in April 2016 when Paramount Pictures released the first promotional image of Johansson in costume. The anger toward her casting was exacerbated by reports that Lola VFX, the company behind the character-aging effects in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), was commissioned to manage tests on visual effects to make white actors look Asian, though the results were reportedly rejected immediately upon their review.

– For the Japanese dub of the film, the voice actors from Kôkaku Kidôtai (1995) – Atsuko Tanaka (the Major), Akio Ôtsuka (Batou) and Kôichi Yamadera (Togusa) – reprise their roles.

– The film’s villain is Hideo Kuze (a terrorist cyborg), but incorporates elements of the Laughing Man (a hacker who walks around in a parka coat).